By exposing mice to a unique combination of light and sound, MIT neuroscientists have shown that they can improve cognitive and memory impairments similar to those seen in Alzheimer's patients.

This noninvasive treatment, which works by inducing brain waves known as gamma oscillations, also greatly reduced the number of amyloid plaques found in the brains of these mice. Plaques were cleared in large swaths of the brain, including areas critical for cognitive functions such as learning and memory.

I'm relatively skeptical that this will work as well in humans as in their mouse model, but, who knows ...

The mice were 6-9 months old, which makes me wonder if this would really work in older individiuals. You can see in Figure 5 that there was an improvement in vascular diameter and presumably bloodflow. The LRP1 colocalizing with AB in the same figure, demonstrates that AB is probably being cleared. What I don't get is why Gamma and what is the logic behind this? In a QEEG, they map delta, theta, beta and alpha waves. They don't even look at Gamma waves.

You can hear the sound file they played for the mice on this NY Times article:

aphorist wrote:The mice were 6-9 months old, which makes me wonder if this would really work in older individiuals. You can see in Figure 5 that there was an improvement in vascular diameter and presumably bloodflow. The LRP1 colocalizing with AB in the same figure, demonstrates that AB is probably being cleared. What I don't get is why Gamma and what is the logic behind this? ...I think I would lose my mind just listening to that for 1 hour....

Thanks for sharing the link, aphorist. I got through about 10 seconds of the sound, which made my tinnitus seem like a gift by comparison. Looks like they decided not to torture people:

Dr. Tsai’s team has tested light and sound on healthy people, using a four-by-three-foot light panel and high-quality stereo speakers, “so the sound is more tolerable to humans, because it’s not melody, it’s clicks,” she said. Electroencephalogram measurements show the desired gamma-wave effect, she said, and “nobody complains about any discomfort or headache or anything.”

And this might explain the focus on gamma waves, from a February 2018 article on Tsai's research in Nature:

...the highest frequency are gamma waves, which range from 25 to 140 hertz. People often show a lot of this kind of activity when they are at peak concentration...People with Alzheimer’s disease show a reduction in gamma oscillations. So Tsai and others wondered whether gamma-wave activity could be restored, and whether this would have any effect on the disease.

To achieve a longer-lasting effect on animals with amyloid plaques, they repeated the experiment for an hour a day over the course of a week, this time using older mice in which plaques had begun to form. Twenty-four hours after the end of the experiment, these animals showed a 67% reduction in plaque in the visual cortex compared with controls. The team also found that the technique reduced tau protein, another hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.

Since these are all genetically engineered mice designed to get AD in a reasonable "window" of research time, 6-9 months may be "advanced old age" for them.

Sounds like a basic and early-stage clinical research focus ready for lots of new post-docs to start working on!

Do they have a clue how the AB is getting cleared? And also the tau, which may prove to be more important? These are normal brain rhythms, but could it be causing some kind of actual physical vibration breaking these up so they can more easily fit down the drain?

mike wrote:Do they have a clue how the AB is getting cleared? And also the tau, which may prove to be more important? These are normal brain rhythms, but could it be causing some kind of actual physical vibration breaking these up so they can more easily fit down the drain?